(1)
My violinist, Mr. Zhao Wentao, was born in a poor family in a small town by the Heilongjiang River in the northeast. He was of medium stature, with eyes as big as bells, slightly curly hair, and a face that could be heavily bearded forever shaved and ironic. In retrospect today, he may have been of Russian or Tsarist Russian Jewish descent.
According to Mr. Zhao, one winter night when he was 10 years old, he passed by the door of a rich family in town. The rich man’s house was hot, the doors and windows were open, and there was a record player playing in the window. Thus, for the first time in his life, Mr. Zhao heard the sound of the violin sent out from the record …… According to Mr. Zhao, the sound of the fiddle seized his soul for life.
But it was not easy for a poor 10-year-old child to play and learn the violin. First of all, Mr. Zhao’s home town simply does not have a fiddle. There was a store in a city near his home, and in order to decorate the front, the owner had a violin in the window, but the owner had no intention of selling it, so there was no price tag – and even if there was a price, it was definitely too high for Mr. Zhao to afford. Mr. Zhao begged the owner if he could take out the violin and show it to him. But the owner was afraid of being broken, so he couldn’t even show it to him, no matter how much he begged.
Teenage Mr. Zhao was too obsessed with the fiddle. So he began to walk to that town several times a week, looking through the glass ah, compare ah …… boss bombarded him a few times, finally also curious, asked him what this is to do. Mr. Zhao answered truthfully that he was figuring out its dimensions and wanted to draw a fiddle from a gourd and make one himself with a wooden board.
The owner was finally moved by the teenager’s sincerity and persistence. He let Mr. Zhao into the store and saw the fiddle up close for the first time (but was still not allowed to touch it). When Mr. Zhao left, both sides agreed that the boss would allow him to bring a large piece of paper the next day, like a shoemaker making shoes, with a pencil to top down the shape of the instrument on paper, and draw the shape of other parts for reference.
In this way, Mr. Zhao found all kinds of materials, according to the traced down drawings, through I do not know how many times the failure, and finally made his first so-called “fiddle”. Mr. Zhao told me that the back of the violin was flat and the top was made of plywood. “When you put the strings on and pull it, ha, that’s not the sound of a violin at all ……”
However, the 10-year-old Mr. Zhao held his “fiddle” all day long and began to teach himself day and night.
If people are sincere, stones can bloom. Finally, when Mr. Zhao’s father saw how persistent his son was (perhaps simply because the sound of the homemade violin was too difficult to hear), he finally managed to squeeze out the money to buy him a cheap violin. By this time, Mr. Zhao was already a twelve-year-old teenager, too late according to what he later often sighed. “Four or five years old is best. Eight, at the latest, before eight.”
But with a dream comes motivation. When a teenager has a dream, the momentum doubles. In those days, there were many White Russians, or old Maoists, living in exile in China within the Eastern provinces, and among them were many fiddle masters. Mr. Zhao was in town, first under the tutelage of a Chinese man. After he reached a certain level of playing, he was lucky enough to find a well-known White Russian fiddler as his teacher. He practiced his violin with several times the hard work of other children, and with his natural intelligence and excellent musical sense, he made rapid progress.
As an adult, Mr. Zhao really practiced to become a professional fiddler and pulled himself up from Harbin to Beijing. When my father took me to him as a teacher, he was the deputy chief of the Beijing Railway Cultural Troupe.
(2)
Mr. Zhao was a very good fiddle teacher.
Perhaps it was because he always regretted in his heart that he was too old when he started and was not able to reach the level of his potential ability; or perhaps it was because his own experience of learning the violin forced him to give more and use more of his brain than other people from good families; Mr. Zhao had a very deep and thorough understanding of how to practice and later how to teach the violin. His reputation for teaching violin in the city of Beijing soon surpassed his fame as a contributor to the cultural and industrial troupe.
According to one of Mr. Zhao’s sons, they had an old piano for accompaniment at home. During those years, every time a student gave Mr. Zhao tuition, he pressed it under the piano cover and took the money out from underneath when he needed it, never knowing exactly how much it was. It is said that when he was at his “peak”, the piano lid could no longer cover the thick RMB banknotes underneath ……
However, in 1965, the situation changed dramatically. At that time, any income other than the government salary was illegal and was the most annoying “capitalist tail” to the authorities, and had to be banned. The number of Mr. Zhao’s students also dropped sharply as a result. It was not that the students were unwilling to come, but that Mr. Zhao was easily unwilling to accept any more.
It was in this situation that my father, who had also studied with Mr. Zhao, decided to take me to Mr. Zhao’s house to study with him.
I remember that it was an early autumn morning when I arrived at Mr. Zhao’s house. Before I went, my father told me that Mr. Zhao was famous for being very strict with his students, so I was a little nervous. But when we met, Mr. Zhao was very kind to me, and I quickly felt an affinity for him. He let me sing two songs, looked at my hands again and complimented me on their size, and then agreed to take me on as a student, and told a delighted my father that I would be his closed disciple. Oh yes, before agreeing to take me in, Mr. Zhao asked me, “How old are you?” My dad was busy saying for me, “Eight years old, he’s eight years old.”
The disciples are usually the ones that the teacher gives the most hope to, to make them the most desirable students. When I think about it today, I think that perhaps Mr. Zhao decided to take me on as his student because he saw potential in me, or perhaps he saw his own youth – perhaps both.
I didn’t really practice hard, but after all, I was young and absorbing, so I progressed quickly, and Mr. Zhao was very happy. I was still ignorant, but a few years later, he came into the room where his sons were practicing and saw that it was me who was playing the piano with that burning look in my eyes, and you could see how much he had expected of me – that was later.
Unfortunately, after practicing the piano for just over a year, the great unprecedented erupted with a bang. Western music had become a bourgeoisie’s rage and was facing extinction. All those who studied Western music were afraid of being heard to be “waxing and waning”, and they did not dare to play even the practice pieces ……. My practice naturally stopped.
There was a commissioning firm in Xidan, Beijing at that time, which should still be there now. After the Cultural Revolution started, the most things sent into it were all kinds of Western instruments, pianos that cost several thousand dollars were sold for only one or two hundred RMB. Fiddles, including some of the best handmade by European masters, were sold for nothing. Not only Western music, but also classical folk music suffered.
During that period, there was nothing but revolutionary slogans on the radio and tannoy in the streets throughout mainland China. Those were the days of musical death. (1966, by the way, was also the time when the movie musical film “The Sound of Music” was as popular as spring rain and dew around the world outside of mainland China.)
(3)
After a year or so of fervor, the intellectuals stepped aside and my father asked me if I wanted to continue playing the piano. So, I came back to study with Mr. Zhao.
When I arrived at Mr. Zhao’s house, the first thing I saw was a “fiddle” that was shocking to the eye. It had a headstock, a fingerboard, a yard, and strings that ran up and down. However, it does not have a body. In its place, it is an inch square long strip of wood. Mr. Zhao said that this time, he used one of his own instruments, which was not very good, and took off the body to modify it.
I remember that once Mr. Zhao played a concerto by Lao Chai on this “piano”. He played it with great dedication, but the sound it made was no bigger than the sound of a mosquito. Mr. Zhao and his family called the instrument a “silent instrument”. Even so, they still need to be especially careful, and from time to time to the next door neighbors to send some of their own freshly cooked meals, to make good relations, afraid that people to denounce that Mr. Zhao’s home came out of the sound of music – the sound of the wind.
Later I learned that not only Mr. Zhao, there are many other people who play the piano have also done the same silent piano.
After that, for almost half a year, I had to go to Ms. Zhao’s house once every Sunday to return to class. That was the period when I made the most progress on the piano. Children, after all, are sometimes lazy. There were times when I didn’t have much time to practice, so I was a little nervous when I returned to class. There were times when I was ready to be scolded by Mr. Zhao. However, he praised me for my good playing. Maybe he knew in his heart how to encourage a beginner, I don’t know.
In 1968, Mr. Zhao’s unit and all the literary units in Beijing were notified that they were all to be sent down to the Qingfengdian area in Hebei and departed immediately.
The day I returned to my Mr. Zhao’s class for the last time in my life, he acted more anxious and irritable than before, and got mad at me and scolded me because I had pulled something that was not quite right. However, before I left him, he eased up and told me he was anxious for me because he had great expectations …… of me, and how I didn’t feel the fear of parting. I cried. My throat was clogged. I don’t know if I’ll ever see my Mr. Zhao again. I couldn’t let him go.
However, Mr. Zhao did not allow me to childish love. He took the trouble to give me a lot of homework and told me that he would not give up on me, that I should practice well, and that he would continue to teach me to play the piano by correspondence.
Yes, you read that correctly. By means of correspondence. In those days, there was no Internet, no telephone, not even a tape recorder tape.
Mr. Zhao’s letter soon arrived from Qingfengdian. In the letter, he eagerly asked me if I had practiced the homework he had assigned me and repeatedly asked me what difficulties I had encountered. I wrote back to him casually for less than two pages, telling him about some simple practice problems.
Mr. Zhao wrote back to me quickly. And not just a page or two, but 10 pages, a dozen pages thick. In the letter, he told me especially carefully how I could overcome and solve my difficulties. This kind of letter exchange continued for a long time, each time I wrote less and he wrote back a lot …… I was just a fart kid, but I could also feel the kind of burning expectations and concerns from the letters he wrote to me, and started to encourage myself to practice the piano well.
But at this time, there was a change in my life.
In 1969, Western instruments suddenly became “hot”. Due to the need to propagate Mao Zedong’s thought, there was a wave of people applying for the army’s literary arts. Many young people who saw that there was no other way out for them than to join the army in 1968, started to learn to play the violin now, and applied for the most sought-after army art troupe at that time. I had been practicing the violin for a few years by then, so I had the idea of taking the exam.
However, Mr. Zhao was particularly opposed to this. He wrote to me repeatedly to discourage me, saying that once a person enters the clerical corps, he or she can no longer progress technically. It is like a person who has learned foreign language for a short time, if he starts to use this foreign language casually before he learns it well, as a result, this person’s pronunciation will surely stay forever on the mistakes he made at the beginning. And Mr. Zhao’s expectation of me was much higher than the standard of the cultural and industrial group …… He wanted me to be a first-class performer.
However, only 12 years old, I still went to apply for the exam for some family reasons as well as the desire for vanity. This made Mr. Zhao very disappointed and angry.
The story of my entrance into the army’s civilian corps is another story altogether, which can only be briefly described here. The General Administration, the Air Force, the Engineering Corps, and the Railway Corps Civilian Corps …… passed every business exam with flying colors, which made me very excited, but each time I could not be accepted. The last time was at the Sea Administration, one of the business examiners was a classmate of my aunt and uncle when she was at the conservatory. He didn’t want me, a half-grown child, to watch my hopes dashed one at a time, so he told me through my aunt that I should not try in vain, and that my family origins, especially my family’s overseas connections, would not allow me to be accepted into any unit.
This truth hit me hard. I was discouraged, and since my teacher, Mr. Zhao, who was not around, was angry with me, I stopped playing the piano.
I lost contact with my teacher, Mr. Zhao.
(4)
However, my relationship with Ms. Zhao’s family did not stop at playing and practicing the piano. Ms. Zhao’s daughter, who was seven or eight years older than me, I called her sister Lili. The year after I failed in the literary arts, my brother fell in love with Sister Lili and later got married. In this way, my family and Mr. Zhao’s family became in-laws, and naturally resumed their relationship.
However, during the relationship between the two families, Mr. Zhao, who had already returned to Beijing from Qingfengdian, was almost as indifferent as if I were not there whenever he saw me, and he never mentioned anything about my playing the piano. She told me that Mr. Zhao had zero tolerance for the “defections” of his former students, because he thought they had hurt him. This is a delicate feeling that can only be found between teacher and disciple, and is incomprehensible to outsiders.
(In addition to his zero tolerance for “mutiny,” he was also angry with me because of his White Russian teaching philosophy. His school was very strict about the age at which one starts to learn the piano. I was 8 years old when Mr. Zhao first met me, and at that time he repeatedly said that I could not delay any longer. (I stopped playing the piano for more than two years, which to him was the most precious time I could have missed, and it was unbearable.
The depth of Mr. Zhao’s heartfelt anger was clearly felt one day when I inadvertently touched the piano a few times.
That day, I went to Mr. Zhao’s house with my father and brother. My father and brother were in the south room of Mr. Zhao’s flat talking to him and Mr. Zhao’s mother. I heard his three sons playing the piano in the north room, so I went into the north room. Soon, at the urging of my three brothers, I also picked up a violin and played it a few times.
Anyone who has ever learned a musical instrument knows that even if one no longer practices, one’s sense of music can still grow as one’s perception of life and continually enriches oneself. After I failed to take the literary arts soldier, I stopped practicing formally, but occasionally touched it or there is, the technology can not talk about it, that is, pull a feeling. My feeling has definitely improved compared to when I first learned at the age of eight, which is one of the important reasons why Mr. Zhao accepted me as his student.
Although Mr. Zhao taught his three sons to play the piano, he always said that they had no sense of music, so they had no future (Mr. Zhao and Mr. Zhao’s mother were remarried, and none of the three sons were born to Mr. Zhao). After I played the piano those few times, suddenly I heard the door of the south room was heavily opened, thumping footsteps, running over a person, opened the door of the north room violently, rushed to the house seems ……
It was Mr. Zhao.
Zhao teacher’s big bell-like eyes, sweeping through the crowd in the room, finally found that the piano is playing me after, all of a sudden he froze there, staring at me, the eyes …… almost out of the fire. A few, he did not say anything, turned his head and slammed the door and left.
That was a look I will never forget.
(5)
Mr. Zhao was 50 years old when he suddenly fell on his bicycle on Chang’an Street and died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
When I was 50 years old, a friend lent me a cello. I didn’t dare to touch it at first, because my subconscious thought was that I had to find a professional teacher like Mr. Zhao to teach me, otherwise I would get “off track”. But then I finally figured out that I could not possibly have the luxury of going to any professional group, let alone for any vanity, and that playing the cello was just for myself. So I took the skills I learned from Mr. Zhao when I was a child and applied them to the cello, which I played for five or six years.
The ancients said, “Youth do not know the taste of sorrow …… and now know all the taste of sorrow”. The cello is this “taste of sorrow”. Sometimes, in the quiet of the night while I play the piano, I will think of all the childhood encounters, think of their own total corner of the life of a teenager can not bear the weight and aggression, think of Mr. Zhao.
When I was a kid, I played the piano for a day, which can top 10 days now, but I was too young to play hard. Now that I am older, playing the piano for 10 days is not as good as one day when I was young, but I often play day and night, desperately. Sometimes I play so much that I sweat, but I still refuse to stop.
Why?
I think I am returning to my teacher Zhao for lessons.
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